New player catch up..

[MistakeNot]

Also they seem to have increased quest xp rewards. While 3 years ago my main character had to do every single side quest and still needed to grind 2 levels before Castrum Meridianum, the alt I started leveling recently is doing just fine with only running main story questions ignoring most side quests. her level seems to even be higher than required for most missions.

If you do the leveling roulette daily then you won't need many, if any, sidequests for leveling.
If you stick only to the MSQ (including the mandatory dungeons) you will not get nearly enough XP.